Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
Man is condemned to be free.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
